Their second Christmas album on Signum Records, Armonico Consort and Christopher Monks return with a new album featuring a collection of carols both old and new. They have created the perfect soundtrack for those who love an atmosphere at Christmas. Featuring world premiere recordings by Composer Toby Young and the first ever recording of ‘Star Song’ by Jonathan Dove on a Christmas album, there are also exquisitely sublime versions from ‘Silent Night’ to ‘Away in a Manger’.
"It is ten years since our last carols recording, and we have collected some incredible works we have been so keen to record, including several commissioned from our composer in residence. Christmas somehow manages to inspire composers to write the most imaginative, both in terms of creativity and melodiousness, and Toby is an expert at making Christmas music sound just as we want it to be!" -- Christopher Monks
The St Catharine's Girls' Choir, Cambridge, with director Edward Wickham, celebrate ten years since their foundation with this album of works for upper voices. In marking the momentous occasion in 2008 when St Catharine's created the first college-based girls' choir, the current choristers of this acclaimed group present a varied programme of secular works from British composers including Britten, Bennett and a world premiere by Sally Beamish. The St. Catharine's Girls' Choir- the only college-based girls' choir in the UK- was founded in 2008. The choir sings weekly in the College Chapel, as well as giving regular concerts and it's repertoire extends from the early Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, with several works written specially for it. The choir is made up of twenty girls, aged between eight and fifteen, drawn from local schools; and for this recording is augmented by former choristers. The choir has performed in some of the UK's leading venues, and has performed live in Radio 3's The Choir and toured to Poland and Hungary.
Continuing their Magnificat series, and the last album of Andrew Nethsingha's tenure as director, The Choir of St John's College Cambridge present Magnificat 4 with works from composers including Judith Weir, Jonathan Dove, Joanna Forbes L'Estrange and Charles Villiers Stanford. The album also features 'Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis' by Piers Connor Kennedy, commissioned for the choir.
